Penance
by J0
Summary: RATING CHANGE. ONE PARAGRAPH REFERS TO 'RESILIENCE'. Post 'Fat'. Elliot does his penance. Remember, I'm a review junkie. Please let me know what you think.
1. The Call

**Disclaimer:** Nothing about Law and Order: SVU belongs to me. It just inspires me!

**Author's note: **I am not Catholic, but I can see how the sacrament of confession would be comforting to those who are. I think anyone with a conscience has a deep psychological need to be told they can make everything all right again after they have done something wrong. When Elliot went to confession in "Fat" they made it clear that he wasn't interested in atoning for his sins so much as he desperately wanted to fix everything that was so screwed up in his life, but he didn't know where to begin. So, he returned to the rituals of his faith, the rites that had helped him through his trials all his life. I think the priest hit the mark perfectly when he assigned the penance that he did, and this is where I would like to imagine it going.

I don't write EO stories, but hey, you can imagine it going wherever you want at the end.

**PENANCE**

**Part One: The Call**

Brrrr. Brrrr.

He sat at the table and took a deep breath to steady his nerves as he waited for someone to pick up.

Brrrr. Brrrr.

There were six people living there now. Someone had to be home.

Brrrr. Brrrr.

He couldn't believe he had butterflies. Calling her hadn't given him butterflies since the sixth grade when he'd started to notice her smile and her sparkling eyes and the way she tossed her hair when he made her laugh.

Brrrr. Brrrr.

He'd invited her to the school carnival that year and promised to win her a goldfish at the ping-pong ball toss, but Richie Sullivan had already asked her and she didn't have an aquarium.

Brrrr. Brrrr.

But she'd much rather go with him, she had said, so she turned Richie down.

Brrrr. Brr . . .

WE ARE SORRY. NO ONE IS AVAILABLE TO TAKE YOUR CALL. PLEASE LEAVE A MESS . . .

The mechanical masculine voice cut off and was replaced by his mother-in-law's flustered gabbling.

"Oh, goodness . . . Um . . . How do I turn this thing off? . . . Just a moment, please . . . Huh! It doesn't have a tape! Why doesn't it have a tape? . . . I used to be able to stop the old one by ejecting the tape."

Elliot smiled. His brother-in-law, Danny, was making good money in advertising and delighted in providing his family with the latest electronic gadgets on the market. He'd even bought Dickie an X-Box when they had first hit the market, making Elliot feel like a heel because _he_ had told his son he would only pay for half and the other half would come out of Dickie's allowance.

Dickie had loved the X-Box, but Elliot suspected his wife had talked it over with her brother after the fact because Danny had later apologized to him, promised to consult him in the future about buying expensive gifts for the kids, and said something about never having considered the need to teach children to save up for what they wanted because he'd never had any of his own.

Elliot didn't have a problem with his brother-in-law giving his children extravagant gifts, as long as he got some advance notice, but the digital answering machine was obviously a flop. Helen O'Hara was without a doubt the most technologically incompetent person on the planet, and Elliot already knew she would never learn to program the machine or turn it off when she answered the phone.

There was a beep and a grunt and a clatter followed by an ear-splitting squeal of feedback. Then he heard Helen yelling, "Oh, drat! Drat, drat, drat this blasted machine!"

There were a few more indistinguishable noises, then she was yelling into the receiver, "Hello! Hello? Are you still there?"

"Helen, it's Elliot."

"Oh." It sounded as if everything had stopped.

He almost laughed as he pictured her face, eyes wide open, mouth in a little round "O", cheeks still ruddy from her rush to answer the phone.

"Hello, Dear, what do you want?"

She didn't sound the least bit suspicious or angry with him, just perplexed, and without knowing it or meaning to, she eased his mind a little.

"I'd like to talk to Kathy if she's there, please."

He was always perfectly polite with his mother-in-law. She was the one person in the world who had never hurt him or pissed him off. When his mom would sit in the recliner watching soap operas and drinking gin and tonic all afternoon after his dad had beat him, he would go to her house and she would give him a bag of frozen peas for his black eye and spray the cuts that the belt had made with Bactine. Then she'd send him off to play with Kathy and Danny and ask him if he wanted to stay for dinner. Around bedtime, she'd have her husband walk him home, and a couple of times Mr. O'Hara had opted to go in and get his pajamas and a change of clothes instead of leaving him there. She had been his salvation when he was a kid, and it felt good to know that she didn't hold his failure as a husband to her daughter against him.

"What if she doesn't want to talk to you, Dear?" she asked gently.

He had to think about that for a moment. He knew Father McKay expected him to do more than pick up the phone and dial, but if she refused . . .

"Try to convince her for me, would you?"

"Ok, I'll see what I can do." The voice was as kind and compassionate as ever. It was like she understood how much he had been hurt.

First there was silence, then he heard a labored thumping as Helen made her way up the stairs. He did a little math in his head and realized she would be seventy-eight this fall. She'd been suffering with arthritis in her hips and back for thirty years or more. Maybe he should call Danny and suggest that if he wanted to buy her a gadget that she'd really appreciate, he should have one of those lift chairs installed so she didn't have to climb the stairs any more. With nothing more than an on button, an off button, an up button, and a down button, even Helen should be able to operate it.

"Elliot. What do you want?"

Suddenly, he had the feeling that this was a very bad idea and wondered what the penance would be for cursing out a priest in church.

"Elliot?"

"Kathy, hi."

"Hi. Um . . . Why are you calling? Is everything all right?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm ok, how are you?"

He had the distinct impression that Helen had shoved the phone into her hand and walked away without giving her a choice in the matter.

"I'm doing all right," she replied uneasily.

"How are the kids?"

"They're fine. Elliot, what do you want?"

He squirmed in his seat, grateful that she couldn't see him, but he wasn't able to shift the ball of lead that had formed in his stomach when she came on the line.

"I um . . . I want to confession the other day," he told her, wondering what the hell he was doing. "This is my penance."

"Gee, thanks a lot!" she said sarcastically. "I'm glad to know you're so eager to talk to me."

"Kathy, no! Please, don't hang up!" Suddenly he realized how desperate he was just to hear her voice, to know she was still there for him.

"Elliot, relax," he soothing words came down the line. "I was just teasing you. I know you, El. It doesn't matted what Father McKay says, you wouldn't have called unless you wanted to speak to me."

He smiled into the phone, relieved that she wasn't going anywhere, and got up from the table to move into the darkened living room.

"I can be stubborn like that," he admitted.

"So I've noticed," she laughed, then, "Elliot, what's wrong?"

He looked around his home, so clean and tidy . . . and empty, sighed softly and said, "I miss you Kath. You're not here and that makes everything wrong."

"Oh, Elliot, I miss you to, Baby."

She was telling the truth, he could hear it in her voice. With another sigh, he slumped into his easy chair.

"Then why'd you leave?"

He knew it was the wrong thing to ask, and they had argued over it many times. He didn't want to provoke another disagreement, but he still didn't understand why she had left him. All he wanted was to understand.

"Kathy?" he called into the silence. "Kathy, I'm not trying to piss you off. I just need you to explain it to me. Maybe if I knew what I was doing wrong, I could fix it."

"Elliot, we've both signed the divorce papers," she gently reminded him.

"I know that," he said, "but that doesn't mean that we have to stop caring. It doesn't mean that I can't be a better person, and it doesn't mean . . . "

He stopped and swallowed his words. He had wanted to say 'It doesn't mean that we can't try again,' but there was no point to that until he figured out what had gone wrong the first time.

"Oh, God, Kath, how did I screw things up so bad?" He cringed at the whine in his voice, felt the sudden sting of tears in his eyes, their burn in his throat.

"If we'd been angry, if we'd had an argument, it would have made sense, but I thought we were doing better. Then I came home one night and you were gone, and I still don't know why, Kathy. Please, just tell me why. Why did you leave me?"


	2. Truth Time

**Part Two: Truth Time**

Kathy Stabler struggled to quell her silent tears. She was finally, for the first time in far too long, getting a look at her husband's true emotions, and she hadn't realized he was still capable of being hurt that deeply.

"You left me first," she said, trying not to sound like a petulant child.

"Kathy, I . . ."

"You always came home when you were off duty, I know that," she said, "but you never left your job at work."

She paused, chewing her bottom lip for a moment and stopped when she recognized it as one of his little idiosyncrasies that she had picked over twenty years of marriage and a lifetime as friends. She didn't want to hurt him, but he'd asked for the truth and something about his tone of voice said he was really ready to listen this time. It might be too late for them, but if it would help him be happy with someone else in the future, well, she wanted him to be happy if he could. She still loved him.

"I remember the first time it happened. You had this horrible case. Some girl's father had tied her to the bed and forcibly impregnated her with another man's sperm. I kept trying to distract you, telling you what the kids had done that day, kissing you and touching you the way you like it. I was trying to make love to you, but you weren't even home."

"Kathy, once in a while there's just a really awful case . . ."

"But it wasn't just once in a while, Elliot," she broke in. "Once in a while I could understand. Once in a while I could explain to the kids, but more and more you came home and had less and less to do with us. Then you started spending the night in the city when you didn't even have to work."

She knew that was partly her fault. When she got fed up with him shutting her out, she had turned cold. The way she had treated him the last year of their marriage, she couldn't have been much fun to come home to, but maybe if he had made the effort a little more often, if only for the kids' sake, she could have warmed up to him again.

"When she got her license, Maureen took over as the second parent in the family and you never noticed, El. Do you know that? You never noticed that Kathleen didn't need you to practice for soccer with her anymore or that the twins didn't ask you for help with their homework. There were no more games to attend, or school plays, concerts, or dance recitals for you to go to. No one asked you to pick them up from detention. This family went on without you, and you never even noticed!"

"Kathy I . . ." He stopped. He wanted to deny it, but he knew she was right. He felt like he'd been hit with a bag of hammers. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I did!" she sobbed, "But you couldn't, or didn't, or didn't _want_ to hear it. The night I left, I wasn't angry. I just finally saw that there was no point in staying."

"What do you mean?" He was stunned. He knew he wasn't hearing this for the first time, but it was still news to him.

Now that she was in full flow, she really cut loose. She wasn't angry, but she was hurt and upset. She wasn't trying to hurt him, but she had so much to say.

"Some girls were talking about their husbands and boyfriends at work. One guy was obsessed with his boat and always called it by name like it was the _QEII _or something. Another was addicted to Tetris; he'd actually given himself carpal tunnel syndrome but hadn't stopped playing. My friend Genie told us her husband Roy cracked the knuckles in his toes when he got up every morning.

"Then they asked me about you, and all I could tell them was that you're still the sexiest man on the planet, you're decent and honorable, and you work way too many hours. Elliot, it was embarrassing, and it occurred to me then that I was living with a stranger. That's why I left, El, because you had become so distant that I didn't know you anymore."

"Oh, God, Kathy, I'm so sorry," he whispered into the phone. He wasn't exactly crying, but big tears kept squeezing out of his eyes and sliding down his cheeks.

"I guess, with the job I have to keep shutting down parts of myself so I can go on working, and, I don't know, maybe I just shut down so much that I had nothing left for you and the kids. But I still love you, Kath."

"I don't know that you do, Elliot," she said, trying to be gentle but honest. "I think you want to, and I suppose the capacity to do so still lies within you somewhere, but I don't think you've really loved anyone or anything for a long time. Like you said, you've shut down so much that you have nothing left."

He sniffled and grabbed a tissue from the box on the end table beside him. "That doesn't mean I've stopped loving you," he insisted.

"Then tell me what it feels like," she requested.

"Huh?"

"Tell me what love feels like. Do you remember?"

"I . . ." He didn't have any words to reply. He could have used any one of thousands of metaphors that had bombarded him in the media over a lifetime, but none of them described any kind of feeling he could remember having. He was lonely, and he was sad, and he was angry a hell of a lot, but she was right, he couldn't remember what love felt like.

For several moments, he sat there panting in shock and dismay. Then he gasped, "Tell me how to fix this, Kathy."

"Oh, Elliot," she began sadly. "It's too late. We've . . ."

"NO!" he cut her off emphatically. "Maybe we needed to end it, so we could start over. I can understand you not wanting to try again right now, but I'm not ready to give up. I know everything that was wrong was mostly my fault, but that doesn't mean that I can't be a better husband, a better father, a better person. Maybe in a few months or a few years, when you see that I really can change, you will want to try again, and I'll be ready. Either way, Kath, I need to do something. I just can't go on feeling this . . . hopeless."

His voice died to a whisper on the last word and she felt a chill.

"Please, Kathy," he pleaded softly. "Tell me what to do. Tell me what you want me to do."


	3. That Guy

**Part Three: That Guy**

Kathy held her breath, not sure how to respond. When he said he couldn't go on, she had thought of the several funerals they had attended together for cops he knew who had ended their own lives. She didn't think that's what he had in mind, but she wasn't sure, and she didn't want to put the idea into his head by asking.

He hadn't been so honest with her since the birth of their twins. That day he'd wept with joy to find that she and they were all healthy, and he'd trembled with fear over the awesome responsibility they were facing. With four small children, he wasn't even sure he could keep them in diapers, let alone give them everything he wanted them to have. She'd been able to reassure him then by promising that they would share all the burdens and everything would be all right as long as they love each other.

Sadly, they had divided their chores rather than sharing them. He was the good provider bringing in a steady paycheck and keeping up with household maintenance and repairs. She was primary caregiver, feeding, clothing, and parenting the children. When his work schedule permitted, he'd help with homework, drive the carpool, or prepare the occasional meal, and when something one of the kids did really freaked him out, he'd take over as Head Disciplinarian for a while, but those duties usually fell to her.

She loved her husband and her children, and for a long time she had been happy to take up the slack when he couldn't quite manage everything he was supposed to do. Maybe that was why it had been so easy for him to drift away from them, because she had spent far too long trying to fill the gap he left in all their lives.

She still loved the man she had married, the man who had shared his hopes and dreams and fears with her. But she didn't know Elliot Stabler anymore, and she'd rather raise her children on her own than with a stranger.

"Kathy? What should I do?"

She gasped, a little startled by his voice in her ear, and she realized she had been silent for a long time. She didn't want to give him false hope, but she didn't want to discourage him either. She was afraid of what he might do to himself if she told him there was no hope.

If only things could go back to the way they were when they were first married! Yes, it was harder then because money was tight and the kids were small, but it was so much easier, too, because they were young and happy and in love. Back then, she knew what mattered to him and where he liked to be touched and what to say to make him blush; and he knew the same about her. No matter what went wrong from day to day, they could each make everything all right for the other.

Suddenly, she was struck by an idea.

"Get out our wedding album from the shelf under the TV," she told him. "The program from the service is in the pocket inside the front cover. Read the poem I had printed in it. That's the guy I married. I still love him, and I want him back. I want to be that woman again. If you want to be that guy, call me back when you're done reading. I'll be waiting by the phone."


	4. The Poem

**Part Four: The Poem **

Elliot jumped when he heard the click in his ear. He was shocked that she'd just hung up on him. He hadn't meant to piss her off. Then he realized that she hadn't been pissed. She had told him to do something. Then next thing he knew, he was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV with the wedding album in his lap.

She had told him there was a chance, a slim chance, definitely, and more than likely their last chance, but he would take it. He'd lost everything in the past couple of years, family, friends, and faith, everything that made him feel secure, but the only thing he couldn't make it without, the only thing he had to have back, was his family. They were his whole world, the foundation upon which he had built every other good thing he had ever had, and without them, everything else had just gone to hell.

He opened the program from his wedding mass, but his hands were shaking so badly that he couldn't read the poem. Resting it in the album in his lap, he took a deep fortifying breath and began to read.

**_A Woman's Beloved_ **

**_By Marguerite Wilkinson_ **

**_A Psalm _**

_To what shall a woman liken her beloved,_

_And with what shall she compare him to do him honor?_

_He is like the close-folded new leaves of the woodbine, odorless, but sweet,_

_Flushed with a new and swiftly rising life,_

_Strong to grow and give glad shade in summer._

_Even thus should a woman's beloved shelter her in time of anguish._

_And he is like the young robin, eager to try his wings,_

_For within soft-stirring wings of the spirit has she cherished him,_

_And with the love of the mother bird shall she embolden him, that his flight may avail._

_0_

_A woman's beloved is to her as the roots of the willow,_

_Long, strong, white roots, bedded lovingly in the dark._

_Into the depths of her have gone the roots of his strength and of his pride,_

_That she may nourish him well and become his fulfilment._

_None may tear him from the broad fields where he is planted!_

_0_

Tears blurred his vision. He wiped them away with the back of his shirtsleeve and continued reading.

_0_

_A woman's beloved is like the sun rising upon the waters, making the dark places light,_

_And like the morning melody of the pine trees._

_Truly, she thinks the roses die joyously_

_If they are crushed beneath his feet._

_A woman's beloved is to her a great void that she may illumine,_

_A great king that she may crown, a great soul that she may redeem._

_And he is also the perfecting of life,_

_Flowers for the altar, bread for the lips, wine for the chalice._

_0_

_You that have known passion, think not that you have fathomed love._

_It may be that you have never seen love's face._

_For love thrusts aside storm-clouds of passion to unveil the heavens,_

_And, in the heart of a woman, only then is love born._

_0_

_To what shall I liken a woman's beloved,_

_And with what shall I compare him to do him honor?_

_He is a flower, a song, a struggle, a wild storm,_

_And, at the last, he is redemption, power, joy, fulfillment and perfect peace._

He finished reading the poem and laughed, and at the same time he cried like a baby. He didn't try to stop the tears; he wouldn't have been able if he had wanted to. When he was a kid, when they'd gotten married, he hadn't even understood all of the words, let alone what they meant. Now, it all made perfect sense to him.

He could remember being that guy, when he and Kathy had shared that kind of love, and he ached for all he had lost, for everything that he had carelessly allowed to slip away. He let himself crumple over slowly and lay on his side on the carpet curled around the wedding album, and for a while, he let the despair overwhelm him.


	5. Lifeline

**Part Five: Lifeline**

Brrrr. Brrrr.

He had butterflies again, but these were happy, hopeful butterflies.

"Elliot?"

He let the smile come through in his voice when he told her, "I guess we've survived the struggle and the wild storm. Now, if we can manage the redemption, we'll have the rest of our lives to work up to perfect peace. I just need you to tell me where to start."

He could picture her with her eyes and nose red from crying, her cheeks pink. She was still the most beautiful woman in the world, and he could hear her smile when she spoke.

"Tell me how you're feeling."

The tears plagued him again, filling his eyes and rolling down his face as fast as he could wipe them away.

"Like I've been drowning for so long," he said. "Like I was going down for the third time and someone has finally thrown me a lifeline."

**The End**

**Author's Note:** By now I guess you have figured out that I am a big fan of getting Elliot and Kathy back together. There won't be a sequel to this. You can imagine whatever you want.


End file.
